contemporary world similar to ours, support evocative storytelling that should
easily pique readers’ interest in the subsequent books, Light of Lorelei and Fire of
Fryslan, which are also available. Ages
14–up.

Kammeraad mixes photographic col-lages and cartoon images with poems,comics, and stories in this visually andverballyeccentric col-lection (anaccompanyingaudio albumis available).Throughout,he returns tovariations onthe lines“Anything ispossible,/ anything at all,” moving from aposition that “we can’t do it all” to “[we]don’t have to do it all.” A story about anaardvark, “inspired by three words, told inthree sentences,” carries the implicit hintthat readers could do the same. An ultra-brief poem “for the woodwind player”(“Pickle high. “Pickle low”) puns on theword piccolo, and in a comics sequence,two human girls morph into a cartoonbird and rabbit for a day of adventure.Not every entry hits its mark (Mr. E, awooden robot of sorts, makes the blandobservation that “It occurred to me thateveryone is somewhere”), but a smatteringof word pairs on the facing page builtaround opposites (crayon and crayoff,island and wasland, etc.) could easilyinspire readers to come up with their ownpairings. It’s a Dada-esque mix of silli-ness, wordplay, and outright nonsense.Ages 4–12.